


Fame Gemini

by Nyanoka



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pocket Monsters: HeartGold & SoulSilver | Pokemon HeartGold & SoulSilver Versions
Genre: Character Study, Discussion of relationships, Future Fic, Half-Sibling Incest, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Incest, M/M, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, Post-Canon, Show Business, Show Business Politics, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-26
Updated: 2020-05-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:21:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24384226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nyanoka/pseuds/Nyanoka
Summary: Privacy is a concept valued by the famous.
Relationships: Hibiki | Ethan/Red
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	Fame Gemini

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't a "true" stream of consciousness, but I decided to take the tag since it does jump rather frequently between thoughts.
> 
> As a forewarning, there is one, maybe two/three lines that can be considered ableist if you are sensitive to that. I did not tag that since it isn't a major theme.

They hadn’t grown up together, so it should be fine. That is the justification he uses when they touch—hands trailing upon skin, fingers intertwining or perhaps palm resting upon a shoulder depending on circumstance, and breaths intermingling.

It isn’t like they’re upfront about their relationship. Fame would not shield them from scrutiny if everything were to come to light. It would be more the opposite really—looks of disgust and perhaps horror meshed with a barrage of flashing lights and barking questions, not unlike the descent of and language of ravenous dogs, yet all most likely culminating in public ostracization and in public disgrace.

It doesn’t matter if they never grew up together, never even truly knew of one another outside of exaggerated rumors, old broadcasts, and the occasional mumblings of a drunken mother—Red had been rather clear about that from what he could discern from his scribblings—or met until years later, he at barely twelve years of age and Red days away from his fifteenth birthday.

Fame and infamy would come for them all the same—trainers disgruntled by past losses and rearing to slander, strangers eager for a few minutes of fame and willing to lie about their so-called “years-long friendship with Johto’s beloved star,” and paparazzi scrambling to tear at their flesh, to pull out their bones, and to rip out their still writhing tongues.

No answer would satisfy those types, those fame-obsessed vultures, not one that wouldn’t be twisted to suit whatever yarn, whatever bullshit, they wish to spin anyhow.

Would they be star-crossed lovers? Most likely not. Too romantic and too boring, easily forgotten among the dozens among dozens of other couplings even with their rather unique circumstance. No one wants to hear a love story anymore, no portmanteau-infested fabrication and exaggeration of reality, not without a twist.

A story of abuse would be more likely. The public always loves those. He certainly knows his mother does though perhaps not with her own son and the son of her ex-paramour. He remembers the hours that she—laughing and sometimes hand-wringing depending on the subjects—had spent watching those nightly host shows, the hours she had spent listening to the radio for baseless news, and the hours she had spent fervently skimming those trashy tabloid magazines, covers adorned with manipulated snapshots of half-naked women and cheating bastards.

Who would be the abuser though? Would it be him or would his age protect him? It tends to be much easier to frame the younger as foolish, overly naive and easily groomed. Who cares about their mere three-year age difference? Or the fact that they are both grown men now?

Perhaps it would depend on where one lived? He knows Red is more popular in Kanto, and he himself is more favored in his home region. Despite Johto’s and Kanto’s continuing outward political unity, they’re still rather split internally at times. It certainly isn’t helped by the rather quick expulsions of Kanto’s Champions—Red and Blue both by resignation and Green dethroned by his rival a mere twenty minutes after his own crowning—and Johto’s infamously long reigns. He himself has been Champion for over a decade and Lance for a total far longer before that.

Nonetheless, he certainly hears enough complaints from Lance about the media. Although, Ethan has to admit, Lance’s relationship is one of an admittedly bizarre twenty-five-year age difference. It isn’t a true judgement on his part—it would be hypocritical considering his own partner, and he assumes Raihan, as an adult, could make his own decisions—but more of an observation.

Though, It isn’t like the circuit isn’t filled with those sorts of relationships, ranging from the moderately weird to the exceedingly illicit and from public knowledge to tightlipped secrets.

Perhaps it is due to their often close proximity to one another, a consequence of business and a desire to test one’s mettle and strength against a similarly skilled opponent, or perhaps due to eccentricity—a trade-off for genius and skill he supposes—but they, Champions, Gym Leaders, anyone with even an ounce of competence, are often drawn to the illicit.

Why settle for some plain Jane or some forgettable schmuck? Why settle for the safe option? The expected?

Why settle for someone who couldn’t provide the air of danger, an excitement akin to taming the wild beasts they call companions? No teeth and no fangs—metaphorical or otherwise—would only bore. In his opinion, no one who could make it as a professional in their industry would be interested in the bland, in the white picket fence dream and some menial desk job consisting of repetitive phone calls, paper shuffling, and email after email.

A fault or few in the wiring of all their brains maybe, but it is the truth he knows. Love—it has to be intertwined with the dangerous, it has to be something given with a catch.

Perfection. Nothing more than garbage desired by the faceless and unknown.

Perhaps that would crush some girl or boy’s dream—the fantasy of being special enough to draw their fancy—but he isn’t going to air all of their dirty secrets. He doesn’t want his own to be let out after all, and he isn’t that much of an asshole despite what Hilda thinks. Personally, he thinks she should mind her own business, especially considering what her brother does with Nate, over passing judgement on everyone else.

But still, it isn’t like he’s the only one with some “horrible,” as it would be publicly branded, secret. He knows enough from his correspondence, a mixture of old-fashioned letters combined with the more modern email and group chats, with the other Champions.

Calem chasing after some supposedly long-dead king turned homeless man, Victor’s rather strange, greedy even, relationship with some rock star and his own predecessor, and a plethora of other bits and pieces. He isn’t as online or as responsive as some of his younger peers when it comes to social media and electronic correspondence, but he knows the beats well enough.

Everything, even the smallest hint of abnormality or intrigue, would be used against them if it were to come to light.

It has certainly happened before among the Gym Leaders—scandalous outings captured secretly on film, wiretapped conversations, and even planted cameras and hacked webcams to record more private moments.

If the public loves anyone—anything—more than the acts of celebration and idealization, it is the act of defamation and exaggeration. To twist words and actions into fantasy and imagination, those are what the public desires.

Moral superiority, self-righteousness, and some fanciful belief of betrayal.

What fucking bullshit. He doesn’t know any of them—any of his fans—or any of their fabricated ideas of him. Is he some coldhearted anti-hero, some damaged beast in need of love? He doesn’t quite care for their ideas of him, some distorted thing, some wide-grinning phantom, more akin to a cracked mirror than who he truly is.

He simply doesn’t want to be the next show, the next circus act to be laughed and gawked at—privacy rended and torn apart for cheap fame and for monetary greed.

He doesn’t want Red to be either. As silent, morose even, as Red tends to be, he is also rather sensitive at times—overly prone to bouts of moodiness and withdrawnness. Ethan remembers the difficulty of befriending him—first greeting ignored in favor of summoning his Venusaur for battle, post-battle handshake similarly ignored in favor of scurrying to the Pokémon Center to recoup from his loss, and consequential meetings almost always beginning with battle rather than chatter.

Their current relationship is a thing of luck, of happenstance and idle mentions, though that doesn’t make it any less important in his opinion. If anything, the chanceful nature of everything makes it something to be cherished, akin to a seed blooming in a storm.

Ethan hadn’t meant to mention their father—then only known to him as one of his mother’s friends—or his name. It had simply slipped out, some idle conversation about dinner or some other shit he doesn’t quite remember now while the nurse heals their Pokémon and drawn out because of his Pokégear ringing, letters blaring red with his mother’s name.

He hadn’t expected Red to grab him then, hands gripping tightly at his shoulders and eyes wide and emotive compared to their normal monotonous brown. He hadn’t noticed how similar their noses were then or the shade of their hair—both dark nearing the melancholic blue of a starless midnight.

And yet, it had simply spiraled from there—days spent off that goddamn mountain and instead at a café, iced drinks placed before them yet entirely ignored for conversation and prattle, or at some blockbuster movie and nights spent traveling together, worn bicycles running beside one another like earthbound comets.

Despite Red’s propensity for travel, he hadn’t traveled pass Kanto’s borders then—having been too much of a being of habit. Red never did like to stay home, preferring instead to travel, but he doesn’t have much of an ambitious streak either. Certainly, he enjoys battling—their numerous scuffles are proof enough of that—but he isn’t normally one to ask for more.

Rather, he doesn’t want more.

Familiar forests, familiar roads, and familiar caves—those are enough for him. Even his team is reflective of that particular trait his, that peculiar lack of ambition: Venusaur, Raticate, Pidgeot, Pikachu, Butterfree, and Gyarados. Outside of Venusaur and Gyarados, they aren’t particularly well-sought-after Pokémon. Instead, they had been the first six he had acquired.

Well, Butterfree perhaps, he amends, but most want the Galarian variation, not Kanto’s. Even with consideration to the species’ tenacity, Gyarados’s placement on his team is suspect as well, having been a purchase from some crooked salesman. It isn’t that she isn’t a strong Pokémon, but Ethan doubts that Red had intentionally sought her species out for his team.

He simply isn’t that sort of person. He isn’t someone who wants more, much to Professor’s Oak’s chagrin. Even years later, Red’s Pokédex is woefully underfilled with only a few dozen entries.

They are rather different people in that aspect. He couldn’t quite sit still either, but he isn’t content with the same roads over and over or with mundanity. Much as Red favors the beginner’s roster of Pokémon, he prefers the exotic and the difficult: Meganium, Garchomp, Gardevoir, Salamence, Ninetales, and Raichu among a plethora of others. Unlike Red, he isn’t content with a simple roster of six instead preferring to rotate his team among dozens upon dozens of Pokémon. It makes him a rather difficult Champion to face—Meganium being his only mainstay with the rest being a tossup dependent on the challenger’s own party—but a rather exciting one to watch.

Overly infamous and rather disliked among approaching challengers, but exciting, nonetheless. Or at least, that is what he hears from his friends and from the bits of conversation he picks up on his travels.

Unlike Red, he always wants more. Perhaps not fame, but he isn’t content to simply wander about the same roads over and over or with the same companions. It isn’t dislike of them—he loves both Johto and the Pokémon that have chosen to walk with him—but a disdain for routine.

Perhaps it is a consequence of New Bark Town’s smallness—everyone knows everyone and everything—but he hates the state of being known. He couldn’t quite avoid fame with his current position, but he could mitigate it—frequent trips abroad to regions where their own Champions are much more adored than he and frequently adorned disguises.

It makes him more sparse than a Champion should be, but he thinks he is justified. It isn’t like Nate doesn’t make frequent trips for his movie shoots or Blue, during her own reign, hadn’t frequently left for her own interests—cartography and sightseeing.

Bastard child. Whore’s child. Child destined for failure or perhaps prostitution.

He remembers those words well enough from his childhood even if he hadn’t understood the nuances, the meaning, of everything. He had understood the sneers, half-hidden behind their hands, and the cruel amusement in their voices.

They hadn’t expected him to amount to much. Perhaps they thought him a halfwit, too stupid or too feeble to be worth anything.

Hypocrites, liars, and two-faced grovelers. They certainly changed their tune after his triumph over Lance and his later showings in the international tournaments.

Flowers and honeyed laughter from girls who used to call his jacket poor and unsightly, requests for autographs from men who used to shortchange him at the grocer’s, and a surplus of other slights.

Want, want, want.

That is the basest of human instinct, for both them and for himself.

He isn’t better than them, but he has never claimed as such.

Perhaps that is another reason why he admires—adores and loves and desires—Red so much despite what they know. Outside of the initial cursory glance, the infamous “Trainer’s Eyes” as it is sometimes called, Red hadn’t given him a second look before their battle.

No disgust, no awe, nothing.

Nothing outside of the obligatory battle anyhow.

The rush then had been different. Unquestionably, Red had been a difficult opponent—Salamence falling to Butterfree of all things, Garchomp barely securing a win against Venusaur, and so forth—and that had been exciting for obvious reasons. But, it had been the sheer indifference that had drawn him.

It is normal, routine, for strong Trainers to seek out one another, and another entirely to be faced with apathy.

Even at the age of eleven, Ethan had understood that. He had seen it everyone’s eyes before then—feral instinct ingrained and not wholly unlike that of a beast’s.

To be so thoroughly ignored even after his own victory had been a new experience, one that had aroused his interests.

He doesn’t think he would have pursued Red’s friendship so fervently otherwise. Strange perhaps but that is who he is as a person.

He always wants more.

Thus, perhaps it is strange that Red had been the one to initiate everything—kiss sweet and quiet and in the privacy of Ilex Forest’s depths, beyond the well-worn pathway between Azalea Town and Goldenrod City and into wilderness where most Bug Catchers refuse to tread. It hadn’t been much in the objective sense, a closemouthed kiss that lasts just long enough to be considered something non-platonic, but it had been everything to him then and even now.

Unlike him, Red doesn’t ask for much, doesn’t want for much.

To be someone he _does_ want—to be someone capable of _making_ him want—is a characteristic, an idea, that drives him into a frenzy, heartbeat wildly beating like a drum or the ticking of a timepiece with palms sweaty.

However, he isn’t naïve. He had expected Red’s interest to be nothing more than that, a fancy driven by first infatuation and meant to be found drowned in the creek by next spring, perhaps earlier if Red’s interest waned sooner, but it hadn’t.

And he finds his own interest growing, blooming and unfurling like rose buds—yellows, pinks, reds, every shade underneath the sun.

Love isn’t quite a constant, waning like the moon or the crackling of a fading fire, but he finds himself drawn to Red anyhow—fascination warmed and kept alive by the details, the faint, almost unnoticeable scar at the right corner of his mouth, the mole upon his collarbone, among other minutiae, both inconsequential or otherwise, and the little quirks; the rare smile, thin lips quirked slightly with only the barest hint of white teeth, the flush of cheeks on a particularly hot summer day, the shape of his fingers, pianist’s, running through dark sweat-soaked hair.

He wouldn’t call them countless, innumerable, because simply, he could name them all—the details, the quirks, the likes and dislikes, everything that makes him who he is, Red.

Perhaps it makes him strange—should he not have tired of it all already?—but he finds himself drawn to Red because of his familiarity, infatuation having been fanned into fervor and then into the steady warmth of love and kept continually lit by the constants and the memories.

He hopes Red feels the same. He must. He knows Red well enough. He isn’t someone prone to wasting time despite his quietness.

They hadn’t known their relation then when they had kissed—he then fourteen and Red seventeen. It had simply never occurred to them then, noses bumping awkwardly, similarly shaded hair tickling pale skin, and a gentle grip upon his wrist—an earnest plea for his attention yet fearfully hopeful in its paradoxical intensity.

Red doesn’t speak much, if at all, but in that, he had felt everything—fear of rejection and disgust interweaved with childish hope and unrestrained dreams—and he had accepted everything, having leaned forward to bare his affection.

Lips touching, he on his tippy-toes to fully return the kiss, and skin flushed and sweating despite the plainness of the event.

It had been nothing in the grand scheme of things, yet it had been everything then and now.

He hadn’t brought Red home to his mother then, and Red hadn’t either. It hadn’t been fear entirely, but simply, a lack of necessity, a lack of urgency.

They’re both people who prefer to travel rather than to stay home.

But still, all beings—beasts and humans alike—must return home eventually, and he does, hand held loosely in hand with Red.

He still remembers how his mother had screamed, not because of their relationship—he hadn’t told her yet, and handholding could always be explained away—but because of Red himself.

He hadn’t noticed it then—his mother’s friend hadn’t visited in a long time, some business trip in Unova, and he had never paid much attention to the man outside of simple, parent-mandated “Hellos”—but Red had the spitting image of their father during his younger days.

That had been their first hint.

The second had come during a casual conversation with Green. It hadn’t been a malicious sort of event—Green had mellowed out quite a bit by then, a consequence of aging—but a simple observation on their similarities.

The same shade of hair color framing similarly shaped faces, the same straight nose, and the same long eyelashes.

Certainly, those aren’t enough to conclude incest of all things as the answer, but it had further raised their suspicions.

The third and final hint had come from the most obvious of places, Red’s mother.

They hadn’t asked her or come for her blessings—they learned well enough after the debacle with Ethan’s mother—but it, like everything else, had come by chance.

Screaming and calls for a name he unfortunately recognizes.

He couldn’t pin the blame entirely on alcohol either. Even in her present state, she would recognize the visage of her childhood sweetheart.

And everything had simply clicked into place then, further aided along by the addition of a DNA test.

What should have they had done then? Broken everything off, buried every single memory and emotion like heaping soil onto a sealed coffin?

Would that have been the most moral, the most righteous and societally accepted answer?

Most likely, but the hadn’t.

Perhaps it is selfish of both of them, but they hadn’t instead choosing to continue as they always have—almost entirely secretive yet no less adoring. If anything, there is a new urgency to everything, a new fervor driven by both knowledge and mutual understanding: mutually agreed upon destruction.

Ruined. They would both absolutely be ruined.

They hadn’t grown up together, so it should be fine.

Perhaps if they had been anyone else, some nameless couple from some hick town, it wouldn’t matter, but they aren’t—not entirely anyway. New Bark Town is a hick town for the most part.

He believes so anyway.

Fame is destructive, disgusting in its entirety, but it isn’t something he could let go of, not without losing bits of himself.

He is someone who always wants more and that, despite the years, hasn’t changed.

Twenty-seven and thirty.

That is where they are now—both changed by the years yet not.

Perhaps it should disgust him—them both really—how easily they’ve accepted everything, but it doesn’t.

Though perhaps it should be expected.

They are all drawn to the illicit.

**Author's Note:**

> According to Bulbapedia, the 1997 pamphlet for Gold and Silver has a statement that declares that the "protagonist has a brother three years his senior" and honestly, it would make sense thematically if Red were that brother. Red being the "final" challenge and all. Also I wanted to add something to one of my favorite childhood ships (more of a Proton/Ethan shipper nowadays though Red/Ethan is still really really good) and to add another incest fic to my works list.
> 
> And the mentions of the other ships are my own preference, but I thought some of them were "bizarre" or "not ordinary" enough for a mention. The only non-strange one is Lance/Raihan and that depends on where one stands with that age gap. Also why would an implied 3P pair with Victor be strange? Well, according to my timeline of this, Victor's not even old enough to even have a license yet, and considering what Ethan sounds like here, he's not gonna give a darn about that. He isn't malicious, but it's more of "this relationship isn't the most bizarre thing I've seen" and more of a "mutually assured destruction." If someone lets something out, the entire rest go with. No one's going to judge considering that.
> 
> Though that raises a lot of questions on what's considered bizarre in the Pokemon world's celebrity sphere...
> 
> Would it be better to not be in a group chat/correspondence then? Probably, but then there is the desire to speak on shared experiences. A lot of them, if we go by canon, are child prodigies or people forced into fame through circumstance. They aren't exactly well-adjusted people if Ethan doesn't make it obvious. Though, Leon isn't in this group as an aside. He's in the other one with the past Champions.
> 
> Themes: Fame, Love, Perception, Taboo, Celebrity Politics, Secrecy
> 
> I need to go work on that Piers/Victor vampire AU, but ah...I'm trying to grasp my voice for that rn...perhaps I should do that Servant AU too (Victor would be a Rider imo; everyone goes for Ruler or Avenger for most fancasts for characters but Victor fits more into the Rider mold imo if we consider who's in that class and their qualities)...
> 
> This is also my "quickie" fic to try and get out of a rut (it's not working) but I'm trying...


End file.
